Comp 343/443 Fall 2003

Peter Dordal, Loyola Univ Chicago Dept of Computer Science.
Damen 736

Here is an outline of the entire course.

The outline is in logical order; we will jump around more.

The final exam study guide is now here.

Selected solutions are here.

The midterm study guide is here; midterm study guide solutions are here.

The text is the new third edition of Peterson & Davie's Computer Networks, A Systems Approach.

My general course groundrules are here. Exams will count for between 70% to 80% of your grade, with homework and programs making up the rest. The midterm will tentatively be Monday October 13 (week 7 for us, as we miss a week for Labor Day); the final will be December 8 (I finally checked this).



Programming Project

The programming project is to implement a client for the BLAST protocol, described in section 5.3 of the text.

Students who wish to improve their midterm score may submit a server version of BLAST as well, as midterm extra credit. See me for details.

Here are some files to help you. This list is sort of a work in progress.


In order to break up the three-hour lectures, I am dividing the material into three "tracks" that we will alternate between, at will. Most evenings we will cover material from two of the tracks. Here are the tracks:

This looks like the traditional four-layer model (LAN/IP/transit/application), but we're not really abiding by any strict layering. Here is further information about what will be covered in each track:

LAN basics

1.1 basics
1.2 layering
1.3 sockets programming intro
2.1 links basics
2.5 reliable transmission (moved up to accomodate TCP)
3.1 switching and forwarding (moved up to accomodate IP)
2.2 encoding
2.3 framing
2.4 error detection
2.6 Ethernet
3.2 bridged Ethernet
3.3 ATM

IP and routing

4.1 IP basics
4.2 Distance-Vector and Link-State Routing
4.3 Subnets, supernets, BGP, and IPv6; backbone structure; AADS v MAE EAST.

TCP and congestion

5.1 UDP
5.2 TCP
5.3 Remote Procedure Call (blast/chan v Sun) (not done)
6.1 Congestion issues
6.2 Queuing models
6.3 TCP congestion management: Reno and Tahoe
6.4 DECbit, RED, and TCP Vegas
6.5 Reservation-based approaches to congestion (not done)



The following paper has useful information about TCP/IP security: Security Problems in the TCP/IP Protocol Suite by Steve Bellovin.